Psephology etc.

The emphasis is on the “etc.”

02 October 2017

Finally the Indians' turn?

Predicting the baseball postseason is an annual tradition on this otherwise defunct blog, so, as busy as I am, I'll take a few minutes to do the same kind of analysis I've done the last ten years, essentially factoring out each team's luck to see how good they really were this season. The Nostradamian, Pythagorean and actual win percentages for all teams in 2017:

nW%

pW%

W%

Indians

.644021

.663830

.629630

Yankees

.623690

.617778

.561728

Dodgers

.620897

.626809

.641975

Astros

.609607

.611056

.623457

Nationals

.593533

.589530

.598765

Diamondbacks

.577449

.594370

.574074

Cubs

.572111

.576184

.567901

Cardinals

.536145

.534912

.512346

Red Sox

.534914

.573306

.574074

Rays

.532958

.493455

.493827

Rockies

.512520

.538722

.537037

Brewers

.511367

.522400

.530864

Twins

.501663

.515408

.524691

Mariners

.493556

.486776

.481481

Athletics

.492554

.449257

.462963

Marlins

.479785

.474852

.475309

Rangers

.472678

.490369

.481481

Angels

.466345

.500645

.493827

Blue Jays

.456683

.443793

.469136

Braves

.453302

.447697

.444444

Royals

.450858

.445607

.493827

Reds

.449607

.434823

.419753

Mets

.446459

.427075

.432099

Phillies

.439353

.442987

.407407

Orioles

.438031

.443559

.462963

Tigers

.430429

.411352

.395062

Pirates

.430112

.458861

.462963

White Sox

.426643

.431942

.413580

Giants

.408797

.412056

.395062

Padres

.401517

.365740

.438272

So this year the luckiest teams were the Royals, Red Sox and Padres; the unluckiest were the Yankees, Rays and Tigers. The seven actually best teams made the playoffs; if the ten actually best teams had made the playoffs, the Cardinals and Rays would be in and the Twins and Rockies would be out. If all teams had the win-loss records they deserved, only one division champion would change: The Yankees would finish about 14 games ahead of the Red Sox instead of 2 games behind. The Royals would be 73–89 instead of 80–82, but would still finish in third place in the AL Central; the Athletics would move from last to 3rd and the Angels would move from 2nd to last in the AL West. And the Indians, not the Dodgers, would have the best record in baseball and home-field advantage throughout the postseason.

Based on the above results, it's reasonable to predict:

Indians over Yankees

Indians over Astros

Indians over Dodgers

Yankees over Twins

Astros over Red Sox

Nationals over Cubs

Dodgers over Nationals

Diamondbacks over Rockies

Dodgers over Diamondbacks

But here's what I'm rooting for:

Indians over Twins

Red Sox over Indians

Cubs over Red Sox

Twins over Yankees

Red Sox over Astros

Cubs over Nationals

Cubs over Rockies

Rockies over Diamondbacks

Rockies over Dodgers

I got all the statistics I needed for this analysis from these three pages: ABC